Growing number of IT professionals self-employed in the Netherlands

The number of self-employed information and communication technology (ICT) specialists has increased over the period 2000-2010. IT specialists are also more often educated at higher vocational education (hbo) level and, on average, they are older. With 10 percent, the proportion of women among them remained invariably low.

According to Statistics Netherlands, the number of self-employed ICT professionals has nearly doubled over the past decade from 21 thousand (8 percent) in 2000 to 40 thousand (14 percent) in 2010. The number of people on permanent employment contracts has barely grown over the same period: from 231 thousand to 233 thousand.

Last year, 95 thousand people employed in ICT were under the age of 35, i.e. 39 thousand fewer than in 2000, but the total number of people employed in ICT rose from 261 thousand to 283 thousand over the same period. As a result, the proportion of under-35 ICT specialists declined from 51 to 34 percent. The average age of people in ICT has risen from 36 in 2000 to 39 in 2010.

The proportion of people employed in ICT, whose highest level of education is secondary vocational education (mbo), higher general secondary education (havo) or pre-university education (vwo) dropped from 40 to 36 percent between 2000 and 2010; the proportion of people educated at hbo level employed in ICT grew from 32 to 37 percent and the proportion of university-educated people in ICT has remained almost unchanged at around 20 percent.

Fewer computer programmers, more systems analysts
In general, ICT specialists had the same professions in 2010 as in 2000, although the proportion of programmers dropped from 34 to 30 percent in the past decade and the proportion of (systems) analysts grew from 51 to 56 percent. The percentage of computer scientists remained stable at approximately 15 percent.